


Nothing More Than a Shattered Mirror

by Sickandtiredofyou



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baby Jack Kline, Canon Temporary Character Death, Cas is just mentioned he doesn’t make an appearance, Dean Winchester is Claire Novak's Parent, Dean Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, Gen, Grieving Dean Winchester, Jack Kline and Claire Novak are Siblings, Sam is in here but just a little, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, grieving Claire Novak, he tries to get Dean to talk about his feelings, i think Dean should keep getting reverse adopted by kids this is fun, widower arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29929824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sickandtiredofyou/pseuds/Sickandtiredofyou
Summary: Dean is still struggling with Cas’s death and suddenly caring for a newborn, when Claire arrives wanting to help.The two try to deal with their grief and anger together.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 50





	Nothing More Than a Shattered Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> I know I said my next fic wouldn't be a baby Jack fic but also [@lobotomycastiel](https://lobotomycastiel.tumblr.com/) started baby jack widower arc posting and I has a plot bunny. Happy Birthday, Jess 💛

Three days. 

Three days, Dean had been in charge of Jack. Three days since they found him smoldering the blankets on Kelly’s bed, sheets stained with blood. Three days since Dean had picked him up and refused to put him down.

Three days since Dean put Cas’s body on that pyre and watched it burn to nothing but ash and dust. 

It stains everything he touches, streaks against Jack's baby pale skin, fingerprints on Sam’s clothes. The taste coating the back of his tongue. He can't escape it, can't drive fast enough to get rid of it. It lingers in the air around him and mocks him for his loss, but he still can’t seem to bring himself to wash it off. 

Jack hasn't stopped crying since they lit the pyre. Dean prepared the body himself. He owed this to Cas after everything, to prepare his body right, to make sure his hands were gentle. He carried him out to the pyre too, a baby strapped to his chest, unnaturally quiet in the fading light of the sun. 

Dean hadn't been able to finish it. His entire body stood curled around Jack, his face buried in the baby's soft hair as his hands shook so hard he couldn't light the match. He couldn't pour the salt, he couldn't hold the gas can. 

His skin felt too tight for his body, like something was trying to escape, an animal in his chest scratching and clawing at the inside of his ribs and everything hurt. 

Jack cries and he cries and he cries and Dean is thrown back into every shitty night on the road with Sam as a baby and he can't breathe. He remembers waking up at night to the same sound and curling up in a playpen that was far too small for both him and Sam. He wanted to make it better. He wanted to be able to help and make the crying stop. 

But, the only time Jack stops is when Dean holds him and only when it's in a specific way. His tiny cheek needs to be pressed into Dean’s shoulder, just over Cas’s handprint and doesn't that just fucking _hurt_.

It aches in a whole new way, like he somehow senses Cas there. 

The handprint itself has faded over the years. All the times he’s been healed and rebuilt from the inside out, and it is the only thing that remains. A discolored and slightly raised patch of skin that means more to him than any physical object on earth (besides his baby of course). 

Three days. Two days to drive home and one day to prepare himself. 

Sam made the call. Dean couldn't get Jack to stop crying long enough to do it himself, not without risking waking him up. Even with a day to prepare himself, it still wasn't nearly enough.

When Claire walks in it's like the floor falls out from underneath Dean’s feet. She’s a mess. Her eyes rimmed red, mascara and eyeliner streaking down her face and she looks like she drove straight through the night. Her hands shake, just like his as he hands Jack to Sam.

He holds him awkwardly, his hands too big, too unaccustomed to holding something so fragile. Dean could count the number of times Sam had held Jack on one hand. He couldn't be away from Dean for long or he would start crying, shrill shrieks that shake the very ground they stood on. Cries that cause the glass to rattle in its pane and nearly makes Dean’s ears bleed on more than one occasion.

“You look like a mess.”

“Says you.” 

_Touché_. Dean hasn't slept either, hasn't showered, hasn't eaten. He drove 1,700 miles in two days, a crying baby strapped into his backseat the entire way. He knows he looks like shit. He still has ash smeared across his face, he can't seem to bring himself to wipe it away.

He can't bring himself to be far from Jack, can't stand him crying. He can't look at Jack, his eyes repeatedly drawn to the blue that is so familiar and so foreign all at once. He can't light a match. He can't think about his mom. He can't admit Cas is….

There's a lot he can't do right now.

Claire’s voice is quiet. It’s calm in all the ways that Dean knows that she isn't. He can see the rage boiling under the surface. The sadness, the grief all tangled into a little ball, locked away so deep inside of her that the only place it was visible was her eyes. 

She tries to stay strong, but she still looks around as if she’s missing something, because the truth is, she is. She looks around the room searching for the same figure that he does every time he enters a room and they’ll never find it. Not now and never again.

He turns to tell Cas a joke, and he’s not there. He’ll see a blurry image of tan and black out of the corner of his eye and reach out with Jack, a mumbled _thank god_ under his breath, but there’s never anyone there. 

He’s just alone as she is, even with three other people in the room. 

And then the dam breaks.

“How could you?” Dean keeps looking at her. He owes her that. He looks her in the eye and listens, because he _owes_ her that. He watches as they fill with tears and, god, hers are the same as Jack’s. So similar but not quite right. _Almost_ everything he could ever want and his chest burns.

Cas never cried, even when he was dying on the floor of that barn, black ooze streaming out of his mouth, skin rotting and flaking up the side of his neck, he didn't cry. He just looked at Dean with those blue eyes and told him he _loved him_ , that he loved all of them. 

They never got to talk about it.

“You were supposed to keep him safe!” Her voice breaks as she launches herself at him, her fists smacking against his chest, but he can't really feel it. Over and over and over she drives the side of her fist into his chest. Like a little kid throwing a tantrum. He makes no move to stop her, to grab her hands and still them. He just lets her. _I owe her this, I deserve this._ “You _promised_ me you would keep him safe,” and all at once her anger is gone, washed away with her tears as she leans her head against his chest and she sobs. “How could you?”

Finally, Dean moves. He places a hand on the back of her head, careful of any indication that she didn't want to be touched, but she just leans in farther, collapses into his chest and sobs harder. 

She’s so small, so young despite her fiery disposition, he could tuck her perfectly under his chin. Dean remembers feeling on top of the world at her age. Twenty years old and suddenly he could rule the world, tear it all down from the ground up and rebuild it in his own image if he wanted. But here she is, a perfect mirror of him and all he sees is a scared little kid. 

He can hear Jack crying in the background, having reached his limit of being away from Dean.

Eventually, she pulls away, shoving him and turning to where Sam is holding Jack uncomfortably. Claire smears her makeup farther down her face. There is still anger in her eyes and part of it scares him. It was the same anger he had held the first time he laid eyes on Jack. 

Part of him wanted to leave him there. Part of him wanted to do what he originally planned when he walked into that house gun in hand, but he knows he never would. Jack wasn't a monster. He wasn't anything more than a baby. He cried and screamed and had the tiniest hands and the bluest eyes and even just looking at him made Dean’s heart soften.

Something like that couldn't be a monster anymore than Sam could, or little Bobby John.

So, instead, he scooped Jack up, the baby's skin burning his own, a tiny handprint searing itself onto the skin of his left forearm. 

“He looks like Cas.” Claire laughs, but it sounds more like a sob than anything. Jack seems to quiet as she draws closer, his blue eyes widening as he takes her in. He’s so small in Sam's arms, blinking and whimpering as his crying pettered down to nothing. 

“Yeah he does.” Dean’s voice is rough as he reaches out to take Jack from Sam’s arms. 

Sam is looking at the two of them, his eyes flickering between them as if it was a tennis match, a furrow between his brows. He is probably just as confused as Dean is. 

Jack doesn't just stop crying. He either cries so much that he passes out or Dean spends _hours_ with him pressed against the last fading remnants of the handprint, humming and rocking him. To see him just fade off while still awake was damn near a miracle.

Claire collapses in one of the chairs around the radar and holds out her arms expectantly.

“Come on, then.” Dean lets out a huff of laughter, or something as close to it as he's gotten since everything. He moves closer with Jack in his arms and slides him into Claire’s. Jack coos and waves his hands around. It's the uncontrolled movements of a newborn, more of a muscle spasm than anything, and Claire snorts out another little laugh as he accidentally smacks her collarbone.

“He’s so calm.” Sam's voice is awed. 

Dean is right there with him, Jack isn't crying, he isn't uncomfortable. For the first time, he seems almost happy. He curls closer to her and lets out the tiniest yawn, his eyes crunching closed. Claire looks mesmerized. She gives Jack her fingers and he wraps his whole hand around them. 

“I'm staying.” Claire says suddenly, eyes still locked with Jack’s. She can't seem to look away and neither can he.

“Okay.” And it’s as simple as that. 

-

Three days. 84 hours, with no more sleep than a cat nap here and there and yet he still couldn’t seem to fall asleep. Every time he tries, he manages to get five steps away from Jack’s bassinet before he starts to scream and he couldn't exactly sleep with the baby on him, not when he could wake up from a nightmare fighting. 

So he wanders the bunker. Up and down through the levels, crisscrossing through the hallways. Jack is tucked up against his shoulder like always. The thumb of the handprint brushes against his cheek in the mockery of a caress. He’s whimpering slightly, but at the very least he hasn’t completely started crying yet.

Dean reaches the kitchen only to find it already occupied. Claire is perched on the counter, a beer in one hand and the other wiping away another round of tears. Dean debates leaving her there, but finds that he can’t. 

He’s been there more than a handful of times and during each one he was constantly torn between wanting to be left the fuck alone and wanting someone to notice. He wanted someone to realize that he wasn’t doing okay, to sit there with him as he broke apart. He never wanted to talk, didn’t want to cry in front of them, but realizing that someone cared enough to notice his downward spiral always seemed to help in its own fucked up way. 

So, Dean pulls the bottle from her loose fingertips and puts on a pot of coffee. Claire makes grabby-hands at him until he relents, handing over Jack who just coos and twines his hands into her leather jacket. Well, Dean’s leather jacket. The same one she had snagged from his closet not too long ago, as if he wouldn’t notice. Jack immediately falls more silent than he’s been all day, his eyes sliding shut with another yawn that is far too big for his tiny body. 

She’s so good with him already, her hands gentle as they shush him. 

Claire thinks her hands are made for violence, for torture, for killing, for hunting. She thinks that’s all they’ll ever really be good for. She’s a predator, a soldier, made for a war that she didn’t know existed until it ruined her life. But those hands are also for protecting, for comforting, for saving. 

She is good, at her core. Gentle and loving and all of Dean and Cas and Sam and Jody and Donna’s good traits all mixed into one girl who stands before him. A better person than he’ll ever be. 

She’s stolen his bad traits too, the same way she stole that jacket. Put it on as a layer of protection against the world. It’s too big for her, doesn’t fit quite right, because it’s not hers and it’s not Dean’s either. It was too big for Dean too when he first put it on 20 years ago and he doesn’t know if he ever actually grew into it, or just thinks he did. 

Together, they sit, shoulder to shoulder and don't say anything and that’s enough for the both of them. They drink their coffee until they can blame their shaking hands on that and listen to Jack’s even breathing. 

Dean doesn’t move, even as Claire rests her head against his shoulder, the same shoulder Jack does, and he feels the tears soak in. 

Four days. 96 hours and Jack finally manages to fall asleep without crying. 

-

Nine days. 

Nine days and he’s barely surviving. He can’t move, he can’t breathe, he can’t exist without something tearing at him from the inside out. But, he continues on anyway. 

So many things he can’t do. So many contradictions that have slowly become his life. 

Claire and him have a system. They work like a machine, two parts of the same person. They don’t look at each other, they can’t. Dean sees all the ways she looks like Cas, all the ways she looks like _him_ , and she sees all the ways he’s failed her. 

But they work together, anyway, for Jack. 

And that scares him too. 

It’s hard to see her with him and not see himself reflected back. He was a lot younger when he first had to learn how to change a diaper or make a bottle but she’s still too young to have that responsibility thrown onto her.

Claire takes to it like she takes to everything else: a fake grin that he can spot from a mile away and a sly joke. 

She pours formula into the bottle and he gets his bath ready and at night they sit together on the counter and they watch over Jack. On the nights they manage to sleep he can hear her sneak into his room and pass out in the chair closest to Jack’s bassinet. Four hours later, he guides her into the bed and takes up her spot. 

It never fails to make him feel like shit when she steals Jack’s from his hands. Makes him feel like John. 

Dean doesn’t tell Sam this, but he somehow knows, the same way he always does. 

Sam looks at him as he looks at Claire and marches up to him with a furrow in his brow and Dean knows that he’s not going to like whatever comes out of Sam’s mouth next. 

“Can we talk?” 

“No.” Sam gives him a harsh look and grabs his arm, dragging him out of the room anyway, down the hall and around the corner so their voices won’t travel.

“Sam, I said no.” Dean doesn’t even have the strength to pull his arm out of Sam’s grip, he’s just so tired. 

“Yeah, well, I don’t care.” Sam leans against the wall across from him, his hands open by his side, his shoulders slouched. “Look at me, Dean, you need to let Claire help you.” 

“I have.” 

“No you haven’t.” Sam sighs and runs a hand through his hair. Dean really wants to take a pair of clippers to it. “She helps you, but you don’t let her.”

“Well, maybe it’s because it’s not her responsibility.” Dean crosses his arms, feet squared, even as he sways slightly. 

“And it’s somehow yours? Dean, we were all friends with Cas.” 

Were, were, _were._ Past tense, always past tense because Cas is gone. He’s not coming back, he’s ash and bone on a beach 20 hours away, and Dean took a shower but he can still somehow taste it on the back of his throat. His burns sting when he moves his hands. The handprint of his forearm reminds him of the one on his shoulder and he can’t breathe. 

“Yes.” Dean chokes out. “ _Yes_. He’s _my_ responsibility and I’m not going to push that onto someone else just because I want to drink or sleep or go on a hunt.” 

Dean watches as Sam’s entire face goes blank. He shuts down for a moment before coming back to life all at once, like a computer rebooting itself after it’s been overloaded. 

“Dean.” It’s Sam’s turn to choke out the word. “Dean you're not dad.” Dean bolts upright and suddenly wants to punch something. He wants to scream and yell and feel the crunch of wood and bone under his feet. 

He doesn’t even have the excuse of the Mark of Cain this time. Just his own shitty emotions getting the better of him. 

“I’m not talking about this.”

“Yes we are.” Sam catches Dean's sleeve and Dean nearly socks him on principle. “Dean letting people help you isn't bad, that’s what new parents do. Claire isn’t four, she can choose whether she wants to help or not and right now she wants to help. _So let her_.”

Dean knows. He knows for as much as Claire acts like him, she isn’t him, but it’s hard to divorce the two ideas when he looks at her everyday and sees a mirror. 

She’s been getting more frustrated over the week because Dean won’t let her help. She has to push her way through him in order to do anything useful. Dean can’t stop her from staying awake but he can make sure that he gets everything done before she does so she doesn’t have to. 

Dean doesn’t want Claire to feel like she needs to help just because she can calm Jack down. She deserves to have her own life. To go out and hunt and have fun if she wants to and not have to take care of a newborn that is needier than most. But no matter what he does, she’s still right there next to him, trying to help in any way she can. 

Dean rips his arm out of Sam’s grip and marches back to where Claire is holding a whimpering Jack. His eyes glow gold ever so often, but she just shushes him with a kiss on the forehead. 

Claire already loves that kid. Loves him enough that she would put his life before hers. And you know what? Dean can’t even bring himself to blame her when he made the same choice at four. 

Dean collapses into the chair next to her and reaches out to grab him. 

“Do you want to go get his bottle ready while I try to keep him settled?” The smile she sends his way is worth more than anything. 

-

“So I’ve been trying to find out why you two, in particular, calm Jack down so much.” Sam’s voice echoed through the bunker, breaking the suffocating silence they’ve been in for so long. He stares at the two perched in their usual spot on the counter, a single mug of coffee teetering between them, lipstick smears on one side. 

They look like shit. 

In sync they give him a raised eyebrow. Claire passes Jack over to Dean, the baby snuffling in his sleep, and snatches the coffee cup from his hand. She makes sure to twist it before taking a drink, lining up with the lipstick mark already there. 

“Well back when that whole thing happened like four years back, we found out that angels leave a bit of grace behind.” 

No. 

“And that handprint was a direct tie from soul to grace.”

_No._

“I think he’s reacting to Cas’s grace that remains inside of you. He obviously bonded with Cas before he was even born you remember the park as well as I do. It must calm him down, since Cas isn’t-”

Claire bolts up and Dean sees the coffee cup tip in slow motion, spilling down to the floor with a crash. She’s angry.

She’s so fucking angry it’s like looking in a mirror. 

Dean can’t even blame her when she leaves. Walks right out of the kitchen and he can hear the front door slam echoing throughout the entire bunker. He’s just as mad. He wants to rage, he wants to throw the mug against the wall, he wants to scream because Cas left. 

He left them with a kid and a piece of himself embedded underneath Dean’s skin that he can never get out. _And he left._

He’s gone, turned to ash and dust on the wind and never coming back. No begging and pleading and praying will help them this time. It won’t get him back, it won’t get this piece of Cas under his skin out. 

All he gets is the shitty consolation prize of a piece of his best friend's soul under his skin and the grief that keeps him on the teetering edge of insanity. All he gets is his family more broken than before and apparently a connection to a twenty year old who would sooner wish him dead than help her. 

All he gets is flashes of something familiar out of the corner of his eye that disappears as soon as he turns and a lingering figure standing behind him in the mirror. Dean has stopped reacting to it. He’s stopped spinning wildly at the sight only to find no one there, he finds he can’t take the disappointment, the heartbreak. 

But instead, he chases Claire out the front door, because honestly he can’t take another loss. Not right now. 

Jack is still in his arms, working himself up into crying as Claire gets further away. 

They catch up to her halfway down the road, her shoulders shaking with the force of holding back her sobs. 

“Claire, stop.” Dean calls out and she stops walking but doesn’t turn. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” She nearly shouts it, somehow curling in on herself farther. “It’s not okay. It’s always something new and I can’t.”

“Claire-”

“Don’t look at me.” Claire begs and Dean gets it. He does want anyone to see him cry either so he turns around and presses his lips into Jack’s hair. 

“I just-” Claire starts and stops like a car sputtering to life and he can hear her growing more frustrated with every breath. “I keep-” Finally she breaks and lunges forward. Dean thinks she’s going to start hitting him again, like the first day she showed up, but she just rests her forehead between his shoulder blades. 

“I keep losing everything.” Claire starts. “I lost my dad for a year and then he comes back and I lose him again and this time it’s my fault.” Dean doesn’t interrupt but he wants to tell her it’s okay. That none of this is her fault. That it was his, and Sam’s, and Cas’s but not hers. Never hers. “My dad wanted to protect me so he let Cas in again and now he’s dead and my mom couldn’t even look at me. She blamed me, I could tell. If I had just said no- but, she left too and now she’s dead. And Randy is dead and now Cas is dead too and I keep losing.” She’s sobbing now, her arms tucked up between her chest and Dean’s back. He’s tempted to turn around, but she doesn’t seem to be done. 

“Every time I have Jack it’s like suddenly I’m okay, like I’m whole again. I feel like he’s not actually gone, like I’ll turn around and he’ll be there, the stupid look on his face.” She presses closer, and gently knocks her head into his back over and over again. “And now I know it’s not even because of me, I’m not getting better. It’s just this piece of grace still in me that’s making me think that way and I can’t. I just ca-”

“I know.” Dean finally spins and tucks her under his chin. Jack is squished between them, his eyes glowing gold in the fading light of the sun. They’d have to get back inside soon or he’d get cold. But for now, he just holds the two of them close. She tucks herself impossibly closer, her hands gripping the back of his shirt like a lifeline. “Trust me I know. My dad made a deal to protect me and I still haven’t forgiven him to this day, even though I’ve done the same for Sammy more times than I’d like to admit.”

“That guilt never goes away.” He admits, and presses a kiss to the crown of her head. He wishes Charlie were here. She always seemed to know what to do. “You’ll never forget the people who have sacrificed themselves for you. You’ll love them and hate them and want them back and never want to see them again and it’ll always be confusing.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better.” She laughs and it’s one of the best sounds in the world. It makes the knot in Dean’s chest unclench just a fraction so he can laugh back. 

“Yeah I am, because we’ll figure it out together. You have us now and if anyone knows about survivors guilt it me and Sam.” Claire let’s out another laugh and Dean presses another kiss to her head before pulling away. “Come on we have to get back inside before it gets too cold for him.” Claire nods and wipes away the majority of her tear tracks before making the same grabby hands she always does. 

Dean slides Jack into her arms and pulls her in for another hug. 

“Together?” He makes a sweeping gesture back to the bunker and she snorts. 

“Together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> you can find me at:
> 
> My main blog [@sickandtiredofyourshit](https://sickandtiredofyourshit.tumblr.com/)
> 
> My spn/art blog [@deanwinchesterforbatman2k21](https://deanwinchesterforbatman2k21.tumblr.com/)


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